In November 1996 ranch hands felling trees across the lake glimpsed
one of the burial structures. After slogging for a day up the steep,
muddy slopes above the lake’s southern shore, they reached
the tombs. Arrayed before the men were tombs filled with mummy bundles
and their burial gifts. Over the next few months the men churned
through the tombs, taking mummy bundles out of their tombs and slashing
them open with machetes. In April 1997 news of the discovery made
headlines in the Peruvian media, drawing a stream of journalists
and tourists to the Laguna de los Cóndores. The lake’s
remoteness —10 hours by mule from Leymebamba— made it
impossible to control these visits. Visitors walked over a carpet
of artifacts, posing for photographs with bodies stripped of their
funerary garb, pocketing small “souvenirs” and clambering
over the fragile tombs.

Faced with the disorder at the site and the accelerating deterioration
of the organic remains in July 1997 Centro Mallqui embarked on a
salvage mission, removing the contents of the tombs and taking them
to a lab and storage area in Leymebamba, where experts could deal
with the urgent conservation needs required by the organic remains.

From left to right: Rescue archaeology
at the Laguna de los Condores chullpas; Mummy bundles, Mummy bundle
slashed by a machete (Adriana von Hagen)